International Day for Biological Diversity: Scraping around at Marston WRC

International Day for Biological Diversity: Scraping around at Marston WRC

20 May 2020

Blog

Ahead of this year’s International Day for Biological Diversity on Friday, 22nd May, we want to shine a spotlight on some of the brilliant biodiversity work underway at Anglian Water.

At the beginning of March, the Biodiversity Team commissioned some wetland restoration work at Marston Water Recycling Centre in South Lincolnshire to restore an area called the “Bird Scrape”. Marston has in the past been cited as one of the top 10 places in Lincolnshire to go bird watching.

The work entailed clearing out some of the reeds as they had encroached too much on site, removing vegetation to expose bare mud for wading birds, coppicing and cutting back trees that were overhanging the bird hide, removing vegetation of three island and re-graveling the tops to provide nesting areas.

On the site we have a very active bird ringing group that have been on site for over 35 years. There is an Oystercatcher on site that was ringed back in 2008 and was about whilst the work was being carried out.

Not long after the work had finished a pair of Green Sandpipers turned up and are using the site to feed on. The Green Sandpiper is a rare wading bird in the UK mainly seen in winter and while it favours marshes, flooded gravel pits and rivers, it has also known to like sewage works.